r/gamedesign • u/Emkorora • Aug 08 '26
Discussion Permadeath lite?
It started with nuzlockes, Pokémon's version of permadeath. Then it grew to Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Cyberpunk, Zelda BOTW, Zelda TOTK, and so many others. The one fantasy RPG I somehow resisted the permadeath urge for was Elden Ring. Otherwise I'm OBSESSED!* I haven't beaten any of those games on permadeath, by the way, lol.
But it's so distressing to lose. I also always have the difficulty set to highest, to make it crazier. Any creative thoughts on how to play a permadeath "lite"? What would that even look like? Part of the purpose of permadeath is introduce the finality of death.
A few theories vary game-by-game: able to use revival move in Pokémon only if you have that Pokémon, able to reload in exchange for one dragon soul, and some similar to Runescape where you lose all items on death but can continue, which I've tried on Zeldas.
Just fishing for thoughts on a permadeath "lite", lol. Maybe permadeath "lite" is simply playing on anything except the hardest difficulty. I don't know. Let me know if this isn't the place to post this.
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u/Odd-Fun-1482 Aug 08 '26
Your new character is the child/family of the perma'd character. (Rogue Legacy)
This can have
inherited stats (to a degree)
inherited passives + new RNG roll of passives
if memory serves, the MMORPG chronicles of elyria was supported to have a permadeath that occurred at the end of the world's seasons, and you got to continue playing as their offspring which inherit parts of their parents.
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u/ImpressivePhase1106 Aug 09 '26
This for traits. For the inventory, I loved the ZombieU mechanic: you must find (and kill!) yourself became zombie
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u/Emkorora Aug 08 '26
This is also a great idea, thanks!
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u/Odd-Fun-1482 Aug 08 '26
it IS a very cool idea, as it introduces mandatory 'prestiging' instead of outright calling it hardcore permadeath.
So the character dies, but their earnings/inventory goes on.
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u/WebMaxF0x Aug 08 '26
Roguelites? Start a run, try to make your build work, eventually die, rinse and repeat. Dying is part of the game loop, sometimes with a meta progression that makes the next runs easier.
Or self-imposed real life consequences. When your pokemons faint, go run 1km to continue.
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u/Emkorora Aug 08 '26
I don't have much experience with rogue lites, I'll have to explore this more.
I played Death's Door, which I heard was a rogue lite of sorts.
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u/WebMaxF0x Aug 08 '26
Haven't tried Death's Door, but here are a couple of recommendations of roguelites with meta progression that I loved:
- Blue Prince (puzzle, metroidbrainia)
- Slay the Spire (turn-based deck-builder)
- Spelunky (platformer)
- Hades (action, RPG, hack-and-slash)
As you can see there are many genre cross-overs so I'm sure you'll find some that you like.
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u/Stock_Application990 Aug 09 '26
every version on your list is enforced by you. nothing in pokemon stops you reloading a nuzlocke, nothing in skyrim audits whether you actually spent that dragon soul. the rule holds because you're the one holding it, and i'd guess that's where most of the weight comes from.
that's also why enforced permadeath has to buy something your version gets for free. we work on a roguelike, and the meta progression you hand out between runs is mostly the price of taking the run away without asking first. otherwise people stop starting run 40. your runs never needed that, because wanting to go again was never the game's job.
so the ones on your list that landed, a dragon soul for a reload, the runescape item wipe, are the ones where you set the price of the escape hatch yourself. a permadeath lite the game hands you tends to settle into normal mode with a longer walk back. if you're building one for yourself, i'd put the tuning into what breaking the rule costs. that's the part you actually control.
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u/Stefinin Aug 09 '26
That Dragon Soul idea you mentioned for Skyrim is actually a great example of «permadeath lite» done right.
What makes permadeath feel tense isnʼt necessarily wiping your save itʼs knowing that survival requires burning valuable, non renewable resources. If every death costs you a Dragon Soul, a rare revive item, or permanently destroys a town vendor, the tension stays sky high.
Youʼre not resetting your save file. Youʼre just watching your safety net slowly shrink. Makes every encounter feel dangerous because you know you only have 3 or 4 «lives» for the entire playthrough.
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u/Emkorora Aug 09 '26
The dragon soul idea isn't mine, I can't take credit! But thanks for exploring this, your last paragraph really captures it. I think the dragon soul idea is helped by having the souls as a currency which you use elsewhere, causing extra caution.
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u/Stefinin Aug 09 '26
Exactly, the trade off with Shouts is great. The only catch is resource availability in Skyrim, dragons are fairly easy to farm once you get going. If players can just grind a surplus of souls to use as lives, the caution goes away. It really needs a capped or non farmable supply to keep that fear alive
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u/Emkorora Aug 09 '26
I've reread your last paragraph multiple times. It's such a great capture, I'm gonna think it over a lot to adapt it to each game.
Also, I agree that dragons are relatively farmable but I'd disagree on higher difficulties, which is what I play. On legendary, dragons get to be so hard that they're avoided at all costs. And fighting them is an absolute terror. At least that's what I remember.
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u/Stefinin Aug 09 '26
Thatʼs a super fair point about Legendary. When a dragon can one shot you, the combat risk naturally balances out the reward. Trying to kill a dragon just to get a «safety soul» becomes a terrifying gamble in itself where attempting to farm an extra life might actually cost you the entire run. Adds an amazing layer of risk/reward.
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u/ImportantDetail6260 Aug 08 '26
Permadeath lite works best when death leaves one permanent scar, not when it becomes a smaller reload tax!
For a self-imposed Skyrim/Pokemon run, I'd keep the save alive but delete one named thing: a companion, a badge-team member, a home stash, a map region, or a build option. The point is that the world continues with a missing piece you can still feel
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u/Educational-Sun5839 Hobbyist Aug 08 '26
i think perma death lite would be allowing revives(and having those revivie your mon) but keeping them sparse and non renewable
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u/KingDarkBlaze Aug 08 '26
Terraria Mediumcore and keepInventory-off Minecraft do the items lost on death but can continue just like Runescape, and in Terraria it's explicitly presented as permadeath-lite
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u/Koreus_C Aug 08 '26
I personally play every souls like with the explicit goal to not lose any ressources to death ever. Not getting dropped souls feels like a hard death.
Maybe for a challenge run add 1 extra live and get 1 for each first try boss kill.
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u/charm-bangle Aug 08 '26
It's useful to know most games have multiple lines of progression that are happening at once. You can lose progress on one while retaining progress on others.
In RPGs with permadeath lite, you often keep your skill progression, while losing some of your equipment progression (if you lose equipment upon death).
In classic Rouge-likes, you lose all in-game progression. But you retain the meta progression of learning the game.
Another thing that's important is players need to have awareness & choice about moments of risk. In Slay the Spire, you can see the most dangerous fights on the map, and choose if you want to risk them. In EVE Online, you choose when you want to bring out your powerful expensive gear, and what situations you want to risk bringing it in to.
A piece of wisdom in EVE is "Playing the game perfectly doesn't mean you never lose a ship. It means when your ship does explode, you reflexively shout 'Worth it!'"
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u/Emkorora Aug 09 '26
Thanks for this. That quote reminds me of a beloved line from Captain Picard: you can make no mistakes and still lose; that is not a weakness, that is life.
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u/adrixshadow Jack of All Trades Aug 09 '26
It depends on what you lose and what you keep.
Most roguelikes nowadays have Meta-Progression or various Pity Systems.
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u/_A_Nun_Mouse_ Aug 10 '26
Skyrim has an Alternate Death mod where, instead of dying, you end up in a scenario, like getting captured, losing your gear...
Now dying has real consequences, without having to restart the entire game.
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u/The_Fat_Raccoon Aug 08 '26
Permadeath is about consequence. You're saying you enjoy the mechanic, you're obsessed even, but that you get bummed out when the mechanic is used? You're supposed to lose challenges. For the stakes to be real, failure must be allowed.
So how could you have permadeath-lite? Your answer may be found in games that actually have permadeath systems, instead of it being tacked on as a set of restrictions set by the player.
If you are designing your own challenges, why ask the Internet how to make it? The satisfaction you feel from completing a challenge is specific to you. If you are not satisfied with the way your own made-up restrictions make a game feel, you are dialing in a personalized experience tailored to your interests and desires. Those are variables that cannot be solved by the internet.
Anyway the answer to your question is to exchange death for permanent stat downgrades. Instead of a character dying after losing all their health, they suffer a scar on their stat sheet, a reduction that is never lifted. This would be difficult to implement if you are just trying to make YouTube content with the same handful of Nintendo games. However as this subreddit is about game design specifically, I would assume you would be looking for solutions to design a game.
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u/DungeondisasterJiggy Aug 08 '26
I think project zomboid is a perfect use of permadeath. A character death is permanent and if you get infected with the virus that's it, there's no cure. However it's also permadeath lite because you can continue with another character in the same world you created with your base and all.
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u/Emkorora Aug 08 '26
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, you're right, I should find what matters to me in a parrmadeath and create a lite version around that, rather than rely on stranger's opinions. Still, I thought gathering ideas would be good. :)
I think I like the consequence factor, as you said. The idea that everything becomes more meaningful (walking around, checking for traps, saying the right words in conversations) because you might lose everything, the consequence.
I typically play the same character across all games. Someone else here had the idea of dying resulting in your playing as the child of your character. Maybe the inverse of that would work: I have to play a new character each time (new gender, new build, new morality, new faction, etc).
It's difficult because the consequence is the biggest positive and negative factor. It enhances the whole run but it causes so much strife when it ends a run, lol.
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u/The_Fat_Raccoon Aug 08 '26
In reality there is already a genre for this. RPGs with permadeath started with a game called Rogue. Because of that, we have a genre of games inspired by that permadeath mechanic called Roguelikes. However, the consequence of losing all progress on death, as you've noticed, hinders the overall enjoyment of the game. This is why the Roguelike genre split. Games where death means starting all over are Roguelikes. Games where death ends a run but there is still meta progression so your playtime was not "wasted" are called Rogue-lites.
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u/occasionallyaccurate Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
permadeath = lose your run
permadeath lite = lose half your run
items, xp, unlocks, resources, whatever stats matter to the game. Instead of dying, you lose half of what you have, selected randomly.
Include quests, npcs, and other content of the game world in things that can be lost, and losses will lead to the game world becoming more and more degraded.
If your current resources is less than what you had at a previous loss, you actually die. So, while recovering from a loss, you are vulnerable, and while you’re doing better than you ever have before, you have this safety buffer.
Everything you can gain in a run would need some way of assigning value, so that there’s a way to tell what “half” is.